Two suspicious fires over the weekend have left Montreal on edge.
An inferno gutted the popular kosher restaurant Nöam on Décarie Blvd. in the wee hours of Saturday.
And a blaze scorched the Baitul Mukarram Mosque on de Courtrai Ave. early Friday morning.
A beloved restaurant that is proudly Jewish but welcomes all has been ravaged by flames.
A place of worship where a tight-knit community of faithful comes together was blackened by smoke.
Given earlier attacks on minority communities and an increasingly polarized social climate, it’s little wonder many Montrealers have been quick to characterize these fires as the latest in a spate of hate crimes to rock the city.
The Jewish community has been on high alert over a surging tide of antisemitism. In the past few years, schools have been hit by gunfire and synagogues have been struck by Molotov cocktails. Last month, Hasidic Jewish men in Outremont and Mile End were accosted by thieves spewing antisemitic slurs who stole their shtreimels, or customary fur hats. An Israeli soccer player for the New England Revolution was reportedly harangued with discriminatory comments from some CF Montréal supporters after he scored a goal at Saputo Stadium on Saturday, prompting an investigation by the league.
The Muslim community has been apprehensive about rising Islamophobia. Two weeks ago, a fake bloody hand was left outside an Islamic centre in Verdun; police are probing the incident as a possible hate crime. And scars run deep from the mass shooting at the Quebec City mosque in 2017 that killed six people.
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